Page 37 of One Mistake

He shook his head, eyes wide. “She’s never going to go for that.”

No shit. “I don’t want your money. Or hers. I want you to sign a loan with me at the bank. Use your name to get me enough to buy a house, get on my feet.”

His mouth twisted from one side to the other. “Ry, I don’t know. What if you can’t pay it back? She’d have a fucking cow.”

“You work at that law firm, too, Dad. The money is half yours.” And he knew what I’d done for him, and even though I never mentioned it, I would now if necessary. He knew that, too. At least he should have.

Dad shook his head. “It’s easier not to fight with her.”

Well, didn’t I know that? But I was his kid. “You fight this hard for your clients? Or just your son?” The bitter anger probably didn’t help my cause, but he’d sat back for a decade and let her punish me over and over again while I protected him and his secrets from her.

“Ry…” He reached for his door handle as if he was going to climb in his car and zoom away, as if I didn’t know where he worked and lived and couldn’t do all of this again tomorrow.

“Dad, please.” I might as well have been him for all the begging I’d had to do these days. But this was too important for me to let him say no. “Please, help me. I’ll never ask again. Hell, you’ll never see me again if that’s what you want.”

It took a minute. Several, actually, before he nodded. “I’ll call Ed tonight and have him draw up the papers. Go find a house.”

I told him what I wanted, even why it was important, then gave him the number to the bank whose envelope I’d found in the desk when I was looking for a pen.

“You love her?”

Of course, I did. And I took the bus back to her place, all the while grinning like an idiot because knowing I was in love with her was almost as happiness-inducing as actually being in love with her. The only thing better was the kiss she laid on me when I walked in her door.

“Hello to you, too.” I held her against me and looked down while she looked up. The number of boxes sitting in the corner of the living room had multiplied today and when she led me to the kitchen, all the what-nots and wall hangings that had made it homey and lived in were gone. The cabinets with their glass fronts were all empty and parts of the counter that hadn’t seen daylight in years now shined under the fluorescent light overhead. “You’ve been busy.”

She grinned. “Making hay while the sun shines so I can roll around in it all night with you.”

I didn’t want to let her eagerness to pack bother me. Didn’t want to spend whatever time we had together with a minute of unhappiness, but neither did I want to make her leaving me easy. But I was too happy to see her after being away all day and the last thing I wanted was to fight. Instead, I pasted a smile on and lowered my head. “Is it night yet?”

The first kiss of the day was always my favorite. She’d been asleep this morning when I left, so the eight a.m. kiss on her cheek didn’t count. But this one did and I made sure. On a scale of one to ten, it hit a solid twelve. She pushed her hands through my hair and curled them in and out against my scalp.

“You’re beautiful.” I wanted to tell her every minute of every single day. The same as I wanted to kiss her every minute. Touch her. Hold her. Talk to her.

“Just shut up and kiss me.”

I wasn’t one to argue. Not with an order like that, anyway. One kiss led to another and another and a couple more before we pulled apart. “Should we order a pizza?”

My account wasn’t looking good and I hadn’t worked all week. “I could cook.”

She bent her knees and almost knelt in front of me and my eyes automatically rolled back. But she blazed a trail of kisses up from my belly button to my left nipple then the right. She flicked her tongue over each one then smiled up at me when I shucked the shirt. “That’s what I’m talking about.”

“Packing turns you on?” Because it would’ve completely turned me off, except she was really persistent. Kissing my throat, her leg hiked over my hip, her warm heat against my dick.

“Thinking about you while I’m packing turns me on.” She grinned and pulled my head down so that her lips were at the shell of my ear. “Ask me what I was thinking about.”

Her breath warmed every cell in my body and my dick—already hard enough to cut glass—twitched. I wanted to talk to her, to make her understand how important she was to me and the plan I had for us, but…that tongue flicked out and traced my ear down to the lobe that she pulled between her teeth while she continued rubbing her pussy against my cock, moaning randomly while I palmed her breast through her shirt then shoved it out of the way along with her bra so I could feel her skin, tease her nipple until it was as hard as my dick.

Before I could react to much, she shoved my jeans down, then her sweats and she turned to lean across the counter, her back and that luscious ass of hers pointed toward me. Oh, God. This woman.

“Come on, baby.” Her short breaths huffed out between the words as she reached behind her to try to pull me in. I took a condom from my pants pocket—I’d started keeping one there for these kinds of occasions—rolled it on then drove into her. She cried out and wrapped her arm behind us, to grab a handful of my ass.

We were a tangle of breaths, of hands and legs, of moans and sweat. I needed to tell her what I’d done today, but right now, I just wanted to hear her cry out, to feel her body tighten around mine, to love her in every way I knew how.

She stiffened, straightened and moved against me, moaned and cried out, pushed against me so I was in as deep as I could go. And it was all too much. All enough to make my body respond, to shatter any hint of self-control I might’ve been clinging to. I shattered, blew apart, and collapsed.

There was something about this woman. She shredded my resolve to stay tough, to be able to let her go. She gave me hope whether she meant to or not. But she was hell-bent on leaving. And now, standing in the kitchen with my pants around my ankles, I was rethinking everything about today. She didn’t want to stay here. She wanted her life back. Wouldn’t have even come home to Glouster had her mom not passed away. And now, I’d bought her house. Fuck. What was I thinking?

“What’s wrong?” She turned to look at me as I got rid of the condom and yanked my pants up.